Boneshaker

“What am I listening for?” he asked.

Rudy’s eyes narrowed behind his visor. “For a second there, I thought someone was following us. We can take our masks off soon. We’re working our way—”

“Along the hill. Yeah. You said.”

“I was going to say,” Rudy growled, “that we’re working our way toward a part of town where there’s a little action. We’ve got to cut through it, and when we do, we’ll hit the sealed quarters. And then you can take off your mask.”

“So people still live there, at the hill?”

“Yes. Sure they do. Yes,” he said again, but his voice died away and he was listening again for something else.

“What’s wrong? Are there rotters?” Zeke asked, and started fumbling for his bag.

Rudy shook his head and said, “I don’t think so. But something’s wrong.”

“Someone’s following us?”

“Hush up,” he said fiercely. “Something’s wrong.”

Zeke saw it first, the deliberate outline that flowed away from the nearest shadowed patch where nothing could see and nothing could touch them. It did not move so much as it formed, from a vague shape approximately his own size into something with edges — something with clothes, and the white-sharp glint of a button catching the light from the next skylight over.

It came into focus from the shoes up; he detected the curve of boots and the crumpled wrinkles of slouched pants and flexed knees straightening as if to stand. The cuffs of a jacket, the seams of a shirt, and finally a profile that was as jarring as it was distinct.

Zeke’s breath caught in his throat, and it was warning enough for Rudy to swivel on his one good heel.

The boy thought it was strange, the way his guide lifted the cane again like it was a weapon; but then he pointed it at the shape against the wall and squeezed some mechanism in its handle. The resulting explosion was every bit as loud, violent, and damaging as any gunshot Zeke had ever heard — which was admittedly not too many.

The shattering clatter of sound and lead rocked the corridor, and the profile ducked away. “Goddammit! Fired too fast!” he swore.

Rudy flipped a lever on his cane with his thumb and pumped it, then aimed again, searching the darkness for the intruder, who had not fallen. Zeke did his best to hide behind the other man as he aimed this way, and that way, and forward, and to each side.

Zeke was breathless and half-deafened by the firearm’s concussion. “I saw it!” he squealed. “It was right there! Was that a rotter?”

“No, and hush your mouth! Rollers don’t—” he was cut off by a whistling clink and the sound of something sharply metal carving a sudden, forceful slot into mushy bricks. Then he saw it, beside Rudy’s head. A smallish blade with a leather-wrapped handle had landed very close — so close that, given a second or two to ooze, Rudy’s ear began to slowly bleed.

“Angeline, that’s you, ain’t it?” he barked. And then he said lower, “And now I see you better, and if you move, I’ll ventilate your insides, I swear to God. Come on out, now. You come out here where I can see you.”

“What kind of fool do you take me for?” The speaker had a strange voice and a strange accent. Zeke couldn’t place either one.

Rudy said, “The kind of fool who’d like to live another hour. And don’t you get all uppity with me, Princess. You shouldn’t have worn your brother’s buttons if you pla

“Son of a bitch!” Rudy shrieked and swayed with his cane. He grabbed Zeke and yanked him backward, into the next black patch where no downward dripping sunlight drizzled.

They hunkered there together and listened for footsteps or motion, but heard nothing until the other unseen speaker said, “Where are you taking that boy, Rudy? What are you going to do with him?”

Zeke thought she sounded as if she were hoarse, or as if her throat had been somehow wounded. Her voice was gummy and harsh, like her tonsils were coated in tar.

“That’s no concern of yours, Princess,” he said.

Zeke tried not to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself from wondering aloud, “Princess?”

“Boy?” said the woman. “Boy, if you’ve got a lick of sense you’ll let that old deserter be. He’ll take you no place good and no place safe.”

“He’s taking me home!” Zeke insisted to the dark.

“He’s taking you to your death, or worse. He’s taking you to his boss, hoping to trade you for favors. And unless you live down under the old train station that never was, then you’re not going home no time soon, no how.”

“Angeline, you say another word and I’m going to shoot!” Rudy declared.

“Do it,” she dared. “We both know that old stick won’t hold more than two rounds at once. So take another shot. I’ve got blades enough to turn you into a colander, but I won’t need that many to slow you down permanent.”

“I’m talking to a princess?” Zeke asked again.

Rudy cuffed him across the mouth with something firm and bony wrapped in fabric — Zeke figured it was an elbow, but he couldn’t see and he had to assume. His mouth began to seep blood between his teeth. He clutched his face and mumbled every bad word he knew.

“Walk away, Angeline. This ain’t no concern of yours.”

“I know where you’re going, and that boy doesn’t. That makes it my concern. You sell your own soul if that’s what you’ve got in mind, but you don’t drag nobody else down with you. I won’t have it. I especially won’t have you leading that boy down into no-man’s-land.”

“That boy?” Zeke said through his fingers. “I’ve got a name, lady.”

“I know. It’s Ezekiel Blue, though your momma calls you Wilkes. I heard you telling him, up on the roof.”

Rudy all but shouted, “I’m looking out for him!”

“You’re taking him to—”

“I’m taking him someplace safe! I’m just doing what he asked!”

Another knife hissed through the darkness, from shadow to shadow, and it landed close enough to Rudy that he yelped. Zeke didn’t hear it co

The nearest support beam splintered, crumbled, and fell… and the earth and brick wall came tumbling down behind it.

The cave-in spread for yards in each direction, but Rudy was already on his feet and using his cane to drag himself forward. Zeke clung to the man’s coat and followed blindly toward the next light up ahead — the next patch where the lavender glass let the sky glow underground.

They scrambled and scuttled forward, and the ceiling sank behind them, putting half an acre of dirt and stone between them and the woman who’d hollered from inside the darkness as black as a grave.

“But we just came this way!” Zeke protested as Rudy hauled him onward.

“Well, now we can’t go the other way, so we’ll backtrack and drop back down. It’s fine. Just come on.”

“Who was that?” he asked breathlessly. “Was she really a princess?” Then, with a note of honest confusion he augmented the question. “Was she really a ‘she’? She sounded like a man. Kind of.”

“She’s old,” Rudy told him, slowing his pace as he checked over his shoulder and saw only the blockage behind them. “She’s old as the hills, mean as a badger, and ugly as homemade sin.”

He paused beneath the next patch of purple sky and examined himself, and it was then that Zeke saw all the blood. “Did she get you?” he asked. It was a stupid question and he knew it.

“Yes, she got me.”

“Where’s the knife?” Zeke wanted to know. He stared at the gruesome slit cut into the shoulder of Rudy’s coat.

“I pulled it out, back there.” He reached into his pocket and removed the weapon. It was sharp, and flush with gore. “No sense in throwing it away. I figure if she tosses it at me, and I catch it, it’s mine to keep.”